What Color Is a Tennis Ball?

Lincoln Ward

Video transcription

Hi, my name is Lincoln Ward. I am the director of the Austin Tennis Center as well as a USPTA certified teaching pro here in Austin, Texas. Today we're going to talk about what color your tennis balls are. Originally tennis balls were only white or black and you used a color depending on the surface you're playing on. After a little while, after about 1972, the yellow, optic yellow tennis ball was introduced into the game of tennis mainly because studies were, studies found that the optic yellow color was easier to see on a TV screen. For a while, Wimbledon continued to use the white tennis ball, but after a while even they switched to the optic yellow tennis ball. Nowadays the optic yellow tennis ball is still the predominant tennis ball used, its the only one used for professional tournament competition but there are colors such as the pink for breast cancer awareness, there's also the multi-colored tennis balls which generally are have an orange and a green color as well as a non-pressurized ball that have a really dark orange and a green color as well as some purple and red. So nowadays tennis balls do vary in color but still the optic yellow is the main tennis ball on the court. That's the colors of your tennis ball.